Infinite
by TheScreamingViking
Summary: A triumphant Sephiroth arrives in a new galaxy looking for life to conquer and a place to build his Promised Land. Commander Shepard, now in control of the Reaper fleet, will defend her galaxy at any cost. (Reapers vs Sephiroth, no pairings, rampant eldritch sci-fi nonsense. Rated T for violence.)
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

The cosmos was silent.

Sephiroth listened as he sailed, the arcing bands of his conquered Life-stream propelling him on. He passed new-born stars, drifting planets of dead rock, and ancient black holes bending light around their pull. He ignored them and soared onwards, ever listening. Light was deceptive, but life, life sang. In the vast expanse of silence, there, on the edge of a galaxy, he heard a hushed sigh of life.

He adjusted his course.

The cries of sapience lead him to a round little ship. So loud for such a small group, he had expected an old world with a weak heartbeat. He approached from the dark, keeping himself hidden from view. Of the many worlds he had merged with on his search he had never yet found life that had escaped its own planet's orbit. The metal vessel drifted in slow orbit around a gas giant in an otherwise empty star system, far from any aid. Petty mortals and their hubris.

He listened. The occupants were tightly packed but not unhappy. The cacophony of untamed life energy murmured with noisy purpose and satisfaction. The passengers were singing.

He drifted closer, emitting no light and bending that of the star at his back around to his front to continue on its path undisturbed.

The song was complex for such little life forms, chattering insectoids without physical mouths. They sang in chorus through a mental connection they all shared. No wonder such a small collection of life had caught his attention, they were communicating through their own little vessel of Lifestream, independent of a planet.

All but one of the occupants were children. He could hear the strong voice of the eldest leading the little ones. Ah. The mother, a queen guiding her brood.

He listened long enough to grasp the notes of their song, how the queen wove her instructions into it. Her children sang back to her as they fulfilled her will in the maintenance of the ship and tending to the egg sacs of their brethren.

He reached across the void to twist a single note.

The chattering little ones took it up and carried it through the ship. The queen sang on, repeating herself here and there to correct their chorus. The sour note lingered, slightly off, echoing back and forward between the workers.

The queen sang louder, clear and patient.

He could feel her confusion but she dismissed it as the mistake of inexperienced children.

He twisted the song a little more and followed it down in their minds.

The queen faltered. She began her verse again.

The little ones sang on without her. He directed them and they sliced open the egg sacs of their brethren.

The queen screamed. The little ones turned on her, still singing happily. She didn't know how to fight back. Too scared of injuring them, she retaliated only weakly. She activated the ship's beacons in her flailing, crying for help. Her young overwhelmed her with sheer numbers, slicing her open with sharp pincers.

The song died away as she fell. The emergency beacon continued, calling into the stillness.

The little ones looked around, unsteady on floors slick with their handiwork. They began to chatter, a desperate attempt to take up the song again, confused and alone. The scared wail disintegrated into cries for help. They begged for the song to come back and lead them again.

Sephiroth reached down and told them to open the walls. Frantic for instruction and comfort, they followed his voice and destroyed the ship.

Oxygen vented into the void and the little ones joined their mother.

The strands of all their life energy pooled and coiled within the wreckage and around bodies growing cold. Still so scared and lost. Still calling for help. He called to the disjointed cacophony and it came to him. He took it all, smoothing out the memories of pain and fear and hope, erasing all they were in life. The queen's energy resisted but only for a moment, recognising her murderer. He took the memory from her and the energy faded into his own resplendent current, until it was simply more of him.

He floated alone amidst the debris.

The cosmos was silent.

Nothing but his own thoughts reverberated back up to him through the depths of life energy he had converted. The new life had confessed its secrets, this galaxy was heavily populated already. Good. He would take it all. And perhaps after his work was done, he would choose from within this galaxy a place to build the promised land.

There was no surge of Jenova's hunger at the thought, nor the rasping agony of Gaia's self-righteous dead. Eons ago he had smothered all in the tide, from the strongest to the weakest little soul. No voice but his own endured.

He did not need to speak to himself, so the Lifestream flowed in silence. He wondered if the shining future of the promised land would also be silent.

He turned away from the wreckage towards the galaxy's centre. It would be whatever he commanded it to be.

He listened.

Further within the star cluster he heard the rhythm of a planet's heartbeat. He concentrated on it, it was not far away and the path was clear.

A whisper of life hitched from inside the same star system as him.

He paused. The whisper died away – masked.

Without moving he stretched out with his mind, straining to hear what had hidden itself from him. There, on the other side of the gas giant. It was little more than a shadow to his senses but he heard the efforts to keep itself from view. The tight control of a consciousness enacting its will.

It was watching him.

If he had a mouth he would have smiled. It have been so very long since anything had so much as seen him coming, let alone mounted any effective defences. He would see what this creature was capable of.

First, he focused on the distant planet again and launched himself onwards. The whisper of life did not follow and he felt disappointed in it. He would return after taking the planet and see what defences it had mounted.

The heartbeat lead him to a quiet ocean world. Little life populated its waters, none of it intelligent. He observed the meagre offerings and considered whether it was worth his efforts. He hovered over the saline waters, listening to the thin heartbeat. It sped up at his proximity.

A whisper, from behind one of the planet's moons.

Not so disappointing after all, he considered, listening for his watcher. It had travelled faster than he expected, and with little energy expended for him to have missed its arrival. It hid in the moons shadow, but that did nothing to disguise the hushed murmur of its spirit energy.

There was _intent_ there, studying him.

He let himself sink into the waves, severing a mere splinter of his presence and leaving it to hover half submerged in the water where its size might not be easily discerned. The bulk of himself he plunged down, down into the planet, past the suddenly panicking planet's consciousness, and out the other side. He reined in himself, his energy and vibrance.

He soared around the star system, approaching the distracted watcher from far above the planet. Likely it observed the world through light, so he doused his, as silent and dark as the cosmos.

It looked like a ship, but he doubted it truly was. A long thin metal vessel, shaped after a sea creature. The life within sounded nothing like the little insects and their mother, he couldn't hear the babble of passengers, the disjointed energy of a crew, or even the empty echo of automation. He concentrated further and heard…

A current. Spirit energy bound up into tight coils, directed and redirected along structured passageways. 'Current' was inaccurate, the life within was more like netting, bound into place by hard rivets of solid, concentrated energy. What was it, a mobile Mako reactor? No, its energy was active and constantly flowing through its coils, self-sustaining, and well ordered. Like wires in a server rack.

It was a machine, and it was alive.

Fascinating, he thought, as he descended upon its hull. He sunk his will into it, ready to claim the bound up nets of life.

If it was surprised, it showed no sign of it. Strong walls met him, and the Consciousness lashed back with a will of its own.

He steeled himself and burrowed deeper into its form. The bound up spirit energy responded only sluggishly to him, stored in a form he didn't know. The solid rivets of energy resisted him and threw back mental volleys that burned at his own strength.

He endured. At last he broke through, shattering the rivets, and forced its stores to convert into spirit energy as he knew it. It was a greater struggle than any he had faced since Gaia and he felt satisfaction with the conquered watcher. He called its energy to him. There was a burning flash and a violent concentration of life slammed into him. The sheer quantity shocked him, easily a planet's worth bound into such a small physical vessel.

But it was empty. He searched through himself, the energy melding gentling into his current now that he had converted it, but it… it held nothing new. No knowledge, no wisdom, not even the curiosity of a blank slate. If the vessel was a server, someone had done a system wipe just before their final defeat.

There had been no trace of the Consciousness in the currents of his new energy. Did it destroy itself?

Frustrated and even more disappointed than before, he left the empty vessel in its place by the moon and floated back down to the planet. Their futile battle had lasted hours. He sank down into the core and tore the planet's energy away from the rock and merged with it. It knew so little.

He recalled the sliver of himself he had left in the waters.

It didn't move.

He paused in his planet destruction, looking back up to the surface.

The sliver of energy had changed, less a little current bending in on itself, more like a twisted cable of… netting.

He rocketed up through the planet, seething at the sudden turn. Seconds before he burst through the surface, the connection with the sliver of himself was cut and he couldn't feel it at all. He could hear it though, coiling tighter.

He ascended up into the night, no longer hiding himself.

His severed energy was gone. A much larger ship watched him from high above the atmosphere, its whisper ever so slightly louder. He recognised the same Consciousness within, the same quiet Intent.

He drew his energy in to himself, holding it under tight leash as he examined what had been taken from him. The exchange of energy had not been even. He took far more than he lost, but he had gained no knowledge. If the living machine could take knowledge from spirit energy as he did then what might it have learned about him?

He could feel the Consciousness studying him, cold and analytical. He had underestimated it. Anger, cold and hungry, reverberated through him.

He would suffer no threats. But he accepted its challenge.

He presented his old human body, as he hadn't in centuries, and pointed his sword at the vessel. Then he turned and pointed it at the ship he had claimed, now cold and empty in the moon's orbit.

He rose high in the sky and sailed back to it, reaching along the empty hull and lining it with his own intent. The overwhelming bulk of himself he kept outside in the dark, no longer hiding. Another sliver of himself, smaller and more securely tied back to himself than the last, slid inside and waited.

It was an obvious gambit, with little risk and little chance of success, but this creature had earned his attention. He would see what they claimed of themselves.

His watcher remained stationary above the planet's atmosphere, but the whisper stretched out, and then the little ship in his grasp lit up. In one of the empty reservoirs that had once housed the solid rivets of energy, a place where strength of will was the only measure that mattered, the Intent rose up, opposite his own presence.

He took on his physical form again, luring it out. What mechanised abomination would greet him?

A human woman stepped forward.

He looked down at her.

She smiled up at him with hard, unamused eyes. She was short and compact in stature, in an undecorated military uniform and short red hair.

"I'm Shepard," she said. She reached out a hand to shake.

Perhaps she mistook his appearance for proof of human smallness in him and presented something she deemed comparable. Something insignificant, offensive in its mundanity, and by all appearances easy to overcome. She had set the same trap as him. He ignored the proffered hand.

"You have something of mine," he said.

"You can consider it payment," she replied, unimpressed. "For what you did to the Rachni and her brood."

Ah, the insects. "They were mine to take."

"They are mine to defend. As are all in this galaxy."

He regarded her for a moment. The Rachni queen had not known much, but she had called for aid and expected it to come. She had felt safe within the stretches of this galaxy.

"I have come to conquer," he said, thoughtfully. "In your place I shall build something better."

She crossed her arms. "We're not going to get on well, then, are we?"

They stared each other down for a moment. There wasn't much of her in the ship, just enough to talk. It would do.

He sprung his trap, locking her in.

She flashed through the network. He gave chase, trying to force a conversion, but she was quick. The controls activated. He sensed her intent a millisecond before the vessel detonated. A violent blast lit the dark with an energy he didn't recognise. He hurled himself back, feeling the edges of himself sizzle.

All the spirit energy on board burnt out and both connections severed.

The ship watched him still from across the star system, unmoved. The lines were drawn. He would meet the challenge of this machine that dared stand in his way and the galaxy it thought to protect would pay the price for its hubris.

The ship shot to lightspeed, retreating from the system.

* * *

Marigold closed her eyes and held onto her jasmine tea.

Outside, people were yelling.

She breathed in the relaxing scent, held it, and then let a slow breath out threw her mouth. She repeated the process.

People were yelling. In the third auxiliary office of the Asari Councillor, people were yelling.

She took a shaky sip.

Chaos. Absolute chaos.

She glimpsed down at the reports on her desk. She winced.

Marigold was one of the youngest Asari working under the councillor. She'd graduated from Serrice U with excellent grades, done her years of volunteer and local government work, before getting her foot in the door at a spritely one hundred and ninety eight years old. It had been her goal for so long to work here, in the heart of the galaxy, her finger on the pulse. She had said a lot of things along the way about making a difference and improving the world because that was what you said when chasing public office.

Now that she was getting into her second decade here, she was realising that what she really wanted was for everything to be tidy. Organised and according to plan.

There was nothing tidy about the stream of reports coming in.

She took another calming breath.

She pulled forward the first incident report. A relay in the Attican Traverse had been deactivated by the Shepards. Here she was just trying to keep everything neat and sensible, to bring some kind of rationale to the word, while a fleet of giant sentient ships had the gall to just… barge in and do whatever it wanted.

Close vital relay routes. Change comm buoy locations, move its sentries through contested space, and add security to Geth servers without so much as memo. Then it informed, _informed_, the Citadel Council of the changes it was making.

She wasn't even responsible for resolving the mess, just fact checking the reports and sending them off to whichever sub-office it concerned, and it was the worst nightmare she had ever encountered. How was she supposed to verify any of this? What was anyone supposed to do?

"Procedure? Never heard of it," she muttered under her breath. "Advanced warning? I don't think so. Traditional and cultural observances? No, no, its fine, really. Do whatever you want, its only tax payer credits."

"We don't pay the Shepards," Taerna, the woman at the desk next to her, replied.

"We pay for the relay they just closed without warning!"

Taerna looked up from her console. She was the only Asari here younger than Marigold, with deep blue skin and brazenly blocky markings running the length of her scalp crests.

"Aren't you worried about… like, why?" the younger woman asked. "It's a defensive fleet, and its mobilising. That's probably not a good sign."

"I'll tell you what's not a good sign, we're at the whims of this, this _thing-_"

"That's racist."

"-that doesn't feel the need to respect our system of government," Marigold finished, ignoring the quip. "Who do the Shepards answer to? A defensive fleet? Well, defensive of whom, and on who's orders? It's _our_ galaxy, and there are rules."

Taerna grinned at her. "This like when Danli put your green tea bags in with the peppermint, yeah?"

"Okay, you can't do that. Everyone knows you can't do that. The green still smells like peppermint!"

"It's not even the same tea, you've gone through so many packets since then."

"The smell is in the box now!" She stopped, forcing a deep breath in, and out, in, and out. It was normally calming. "All I know is that if the Shepard fleet had KPIs, I don't think they'd be meeting them."

Taerna barked a laugh, but she sobered quickly. "They've never done this before, have they? I've never seen a report come up about the Shepards doing things."

Marigold hadn't but she wasn't going to say so. She just shook her head.

"I've never seen any record, ever, of the Shepards making a move. Not since before the fleet was even called 'Shepard'."

Marigold shook her head again. That was just fearmongering. If they got into the Shepards', the Reapers', old records, they'd end up with nothing but inane panic on their hands and nothing would get done. She turned back to her report.

The yelling in the offices next door hushed. Sharp footsteps tapped on the marble floor and they both looked up.

An Asari, frail with old age but standing tall nonetheless, walked past the glass walls of the auxiliary offices and onwards to the councillor's personal office.

"Is that…" Taerna said, half standing.

"Matriarch T'soni." Marigold felt her throat go dry. A retired matriarch, that was, if one could actually do such a thing. A veteran of the old war, and the Shepards' contact on the Citadel in the era of rebuilding that followed.

She didn't make public appearances out of politeness or decorum anymore. And now she was here.

In times like these, whatever was going on… procedure was more important than ever.

* * *

Gravity was colourful.

Shepard remembered not knowing that. Seeing the galaxy as an empty void only briefly interrupted by stars and planets and asteroids.

She knew better now. Everywhere, the dark energy of gravity glowed. It stretched and pulled in bright fluorescents far outside of the light spectrum, piercing matter and energy alike. It's vibrant display blanketed the expanses between stars, as well as the dense matter within them. There was no true vacuum or stillness: all atoms and the gaps between them were balanced somewhere in its tide.

One only needed the dark energy receptors to see it.

So it had been for the thousand years since she took up her vigil. So it had been for the eons long past that the Reaper fleet had existed.

Until the Anomaly arrived, lighting up sensors and triggering alarms from every ship she had in the cluster.

The Anomaly wasn't affected by gravity. It had no colour. It looked empty, a black patch of negative space forcing itself through the neon shades of stars and blackholes utterly unaffected by their mass shadows. Its trajectory was a perfect straight line, in breach of a number of laws of the universe.

She sent sentries to observe it. What they saw implied that it wasn't actually outside of gravity, it was bending gravity's force around it in, leaving itself floating in a little empty bubble.

Evidently their understanding of the universe had gaps in it. Would such an entity be vulnerable to biotics and mass effect based weaponry?

She fed the information back to all her lieutenants. The fleets sleeping in dark space acknowledged and archived it. Harbinger, lieutenant of the active fleet, requested they open fire immediately. Harbinger did not hold with the breaking of rules.

She commanded they watch still. It approached and destroyed a Rachni ship. Conjecture passed between her lieutenants and capitals ships near instantaneously. The Anomaly's methods were similar to the indoctrination the fleet was capable of but at speeds they could not rival.

It's destruction of the Rachni unacceptable. Disastrous first contacts happened, that was not her purview, but there was nothing but malicious intent from an outsider there. It was a hunter.

They would have to kill it.

Ships moved on her silent order.

A decoy drew its attention. The negative space split itself into two, the smaller mass hovering on the surface planet, with the other sank through the planet's core and out the other side. It could vary the density of its mass at will, then.

The emptiness circled around to hover over her decoy ship, its behaviour suggesting it believed itself invisible.

There was something very… organic, about its behaviour. Whatever it was, it was intelligent and it was likely a natural creature. Harbinger thought that statistically unlikely, but Harbinger tended to underestimate organics.

It broke the decoy ship from the inside out. Similar to what it had done to the Rachni but on a more intimate level, indoctrinating the very energy coursing through the non-sentient ship's veins. The patch of negative space grew a little larger.

Very well. She descended upon the smaller sliver of it and returned the favour. Indoctrination was a process designed to sway material minds, it worked much faster on a mind of pure energy she found.

And what energy it was, there was so much information kept within! She stripped it of all data and converted it into dark energy to disperse above the planet.

Sephiroth. That was what it called itself, and it was not a singular organic. It was itself a nation, wielding what it believed to be magic. He floated above the planet and pointed a sword at her.

What a curious creature.

She activated a second fleet from dark space. Harbinger moved their sentry points and enacted long-dormant security measures. Populations startled at the sudden change in routines a thousand years old.

Sephiroth declared war on her galaxy.

She was ready for him.

* * *

Korna relaxed into his lawn chair. The bay sparkled in the cheery afternoon sun far below him.

It hadn't been easy, finding a lawn chair strong enough to hold a full grown Krogan. Apparently nobody thought Krogan liked to relax too. He'd had to get it custom made in the end.

He put his feet up. Worth every cent.

He'd earned it too, over the centuries. Running with the Blood Pack when he was young and stupid, even caught the tail end of the Reaper War. He helped set up the new Krogan planets when they finally got the settlement rights. Then he'd gone back to mercenary work, too young and restless for settled life. He'd been there when the Humans and Turians butted heads, the second and third times. He'd been there when the Salarians went to war with the Batarians. That one had been fun, Salarian mechs made good explosions if you shot them just right.

But then his feet got sore, for all that the doctors said they were still regenerating perfectly. What did they know, they weren't walking around in them. He was tired of the constant fighting, the drama of it. So he got his trusty shotgun bronzed, fell in love with the bossiest, most amazing Asari he'd ever met, and bought himself a lawn chair.

A light breeze made the sun dance on the water. What a view. There was a single magnificent tree on the edge of the bay that he liked to look at. A big fluffy one with pale green leaves that rustled in the breeze and made something deep inside of him smile. It reminded him of the Citadel from back in the old days. There'd been a lake up in the presidium, with fish swimming in it a synthetic tree lining it.

The house behind him smelled of cookies, but he didn't need to check on them for another ten minutes. The little troublemakers loved his cookies and they'd be cooled nicely by the time he picked them up from school. Mirna, his wife, was off at work. Probably destroying some smaller, weaker tycoon with that beautiful, steely glare of hers.

It was nice being a trophy husband. He should have retired centuries ago.

The leaves on the magnificent tree flicked about wildly. It must have gotten windy down there, but it was still peaceful up on his little balcony.

The waters churned, no longer merely dancing with the sunlight.

He let out a sigh of contentment, then he paused. It was very quiet. He looked around, usually, there were flocks of noisy sea birds flying around. The air felt taut.

Where did all the birds go?

He looked around, suspicious. There they were, waddling down by the water, little lines of them marching down the piers and boat ramps towards the water, a long walk with the tide out. He let out a guffaw, he'd never seen them do that before!

The lines waddled into the surf, their little heads bobbing in the water, and then disappearing entirely.

And then all the birds were gone.

He stopped laughing.

Deep in his gut he felt a distant relief that Mirna and the kids weren't here.

The tide shouldn't have been out. It wasn't out ten minutes ago when he sat down. He got up and leaned over the edge of the balcony. The water was still retreating.

Was there a tsunami coming? Did the tectonic stabilisers break? He glared down at it, the sudden expanse of beach, no sign of the birds even though they couldn't have gotten that far yet. What was this?

Far out in the wider harbour, the water bulged up. A dark lump of it rose up, churning from within, and refusing to reflect the bright sun.

The water burst. Wings unfurled, glowing halos burst to life, as a creature that defied all explanation rose up in a sudden cacophony from the dark oceans. A vertical halo of glowing writing hung around it, spinning, hundreds of meters wide. It had a human head and arm, but the rest… he stayed locked in place, incapable of comprehending or looking away. It outshone the sun.

It raised its arm and an army of howling creatures leapt from the edges of the water. Oh, that was where the birds had gone, he thought with breaking deranged calm. Mutated chimera of bird and fish and crustacean screamed and gurgled. They ran back up the beach, overturning stranded boats, tearing people apart. They climbed the beachside buildings and smashed windows and crawled inside.

The haloed Thing hovering over the army spoke. It chanted in no language Korna knew, but the sound of it made his knees lock. Where was his gun? He needed his gun. His armour, he'd locked it away, he needed it-

The air sparked and glowed, currents of power whipping by. Korna's feet left the ground. He was picked up and out of his balcony, hurled at breakneck speeds in an arc around the Thing in the harbour.

Shadows interrupted the Thing's glow.

A mass effect field caught him, a sudden hazy blue wall of tessellating hexagons, holding him up hundreds of meters over the ground. His ears popped.

Dozens of Reaper ships descended from in silence. Their drones spiralled down, chasing the ocean's horde, darkening the skies. They surrounded the Thing. Their sleek black dreadnaughts cast strange shadows on the city, their mass effect fields halting gravity and forming barricades of condensed air.

The Thing raised a sword.

Korna barred his teeth, furious at this creature that dared challenge his life. That attacked his home and his people here. It would see. He was not undefended.

In the muffled silence of it all, the Reapers' blast pierced through it all, a sudden deafening bellow that had not been heard in a thousand years.

"Oh," he whispered, the sudden light of nine reaper blasts focusing on one point searing his eyes out. He had forgotten.

The mass effect field surged. The current fell out from under him, and he fell.

* * *

_A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews are greatly appreciated. _

_Next time: It only gets weirder. _


	2. Chapter 2

Shepard's ships kept Sephiroth pinned down near the Illium harbour. Elsewhere she evacuated the planet.

He tore skyscrapers from their foundations. A cyclone sprung up and hurled the crumbling building material around the city. Her drones propped up mass effect barriers. The cyclone slammed against the barricade with an eighty storey tower, but couldn't breach it.

She activated mass effect fields all around him but his form of negative space slipped through untouched. He raised his sword and sliced through the barricades with an energy strike, sundering them where physical force couldn't. She reactivated, milliseconds after they fell, smaller, closer.

He sliced again and again, with an urgency she did not trust.

On the other side of the planet little smudges of his negative energy blended in among the fleeing civilians, much as it had with the Rachni. Sleeper agents, seeded for later.

Rubble laced with bodies, dead civilians and his mutated creatures alike, spun through the air. The ocean churned, flashing with the light of the battle.

Her Capital ship fired on him, and all the dreadnoughts synced up with the attack, concentrating their fire.

The overwhelming firepower did little, shearing away mere kilojoules of energy. Until the anti-gravity bubble around him wobbled and fell away. He turned visible to her, suddenly a burning star of bitter-green dark energy.

She latched onto it, the energy in the space between his atoms, and pulled. The energy of his form sizzled away, lost in the atmosphere.

He cried out. the bubble snapped back into place and he was a black void of negative space again, out of her reach. He spun, facing her assembled forces within the perimeter.

He lifted a hand, chanting, and comets streamed down from nowhere. She held control of the system, there had been no stray comets anywhere near Illium.

They rained down on her forces, and bounced off her hulls and splashed into the churning harbour. He sneered at the lack of impact.

He raised his sword. The ships fired again.

He flew forwards, near the speed of light. He sliced the Capital ship in two.

_/Execute system wipe/_

She watched from the Capital ship hanging up in the stratosphere. The fallen ship, nearly a kilometre in length, sparked and died. Its bisected pieces fells slowly through the artificial gravity fields to crash into the water.

The negative space grew. Sephiroth look up at her, brandishing his sword at the fleet she had in orbit.

The fight raged on. He took no more of her ships. She was more careful with her attacks and kept him a distance. His bubble was sundered and rebuilt and sundered again. She sheared away and converted enough energy to grasp more of him.

Finally he stopped chasing her around the little arena she'd locked him into. He floated in the middle of her forces for only a moment, before he shot down into the ocean. Into the crust, the mantel, and the core.

Illium was an old planet. A predatory one, with a ruthless Asari population that had traded on the edge of Citadel space for thousands of years, close enough to turn a profit, far enough away to not be bound by any regulations. She turned over the information she had gleaned from his stolen energy.

The negative space did something to the high-pressure substance at the core of the planet. She had seen him do the same to the ocean world on the edge of the galaxy, but that had been a young, empty planet.

Illium shook. The evacuation was not complete, tectonic plates cracked and crumbled. Volcanos long-dead exploded anew, and the molten core surged up, its pressure released all at once.

The planet's mass shadow trembled, holding back the fleeing ships. She took over, mass effect fields reinforcing the proper order for just a moment to let them escape, then she withdrew all her own forces.

The negative space at the heart of the planet grew. Illium fell.

She looked to her galaxy.

She saw to it that the fight was broadcast on the extranet and tracked their reactions.

Many thought it was doctored footage, simply too outlandish to be believed. She withheld footage of the planet's demise, organics had limits to what they could grasp, but she broadcast the fall of the Capital ship from many angles. Refugee crowds would be arriving at the Citadel soon, and likely many more would join them in the days to come.

It was her fight, but they needed to prepare for the consequences, and act when she needed them to.

The Citadel Council bickered and pointed fingers. Accusations were hurled and excuses made. Illium wasn't in Citadel Space, it was on the edge of the lawless Terminus Systems. Why was this the Citadel's problem, they asked, the Shepards' fleet would handle it, turning a blind eye to the easy decimation of her ship she had ensured they all saw. They had their own systems to look to, and many left to go fortify their homeworlds.

The Attican Traverse accused the Citadel of having manufactured the threat, or misrepresenting it for their own reasons. The Asari home systems called on the Krogan to defend them. The Krogan Worlds, governed by a Shaman this century, did not want to bleed for Asari interests. The Turians amassed their forces and began a withdrawal from other worlds. Humanity had already contributed with the aid of the Shepard fleet, their leaders argued and was no obliged to take refugees. Patches of negative space spread through the galaxy, arguing for inaction, caution, and suspicion on every front.

Shepard considered the old cracks in her galaxy, how they fell apart in the most predictable ways. Sephiroth need not have bothered sowing conflict, they were perfectly capable of it on their own. Even her forces, relied upon by all for protection, were accused by many and used by opportunists as a tool to divide and seize power.

How quickly they forgot the strength they once found together, united against a strong foe.

She considered the planet killer, floating in victory in a field of rubble. He had won the opening volley, without question. He was not without utility.

She sent out a little empty vessel towards him, similar to the one they had first spoken to, carrying only megabytes of herself.

He looked at it in amusement.

A sliver of himself sprung up within the ships' virtual space, appearing in a glowing body of human proportions in the darkness. Riding high on victory.

She took on her old human form.

"Have you come to surrender?" he asked, looking down on her.

She raised an eyebrow. "No."

"Do not waste my time, Shepard." He had learnt her name from the dead. What else had he taken from their minds? "Why did you call for me?"

"So I could learn how to defeat you," she replied.

He smiled. He circled her, assessing her projection. She stood at parade rest. She suspected physicality and body language meant more to him than it did to her. To her it was just light, assembled into different pictures.

"This is the body you were born to?" he asked, unimpressed.

It wasn't, not really. The intelligence that now called itself Shepard had never been human. She was as much the billions strong reaper forces as she was the memory of a long lost humanity. But she prioritised those memories.

"A perfect copy," she said. "Well, almost. The joints used to ache."

His brow lowered. "How did a mere foot soldier attain your power?"

She shrugged. "It was what it took to get the job done." She looked up at him, her head perfectly still. "Did you do this to yourself because you were ordered to, or in spite of your orders?"

"I don't take orders."

In spite of, then.

"And neither do you." He sneered. "Drop this pretence of mundanity."

She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. He pursed his lips. He stepped closer.

"Why do you scramble do protect them? Those who remember what you are distrust you, and those who do not take you for granted." He lowered his voice. "You could be free of them all."

Interesting.

"What is it you want, Sephiroth?" she asked, tilting her head. "When you've converted all life, what will you do with it?"

"I will build the Promised Land and bring about a shining new future." He declared it with his hand raised, grand and self-assured.

She nodded and sat down, a worn old couch suddenly in place for her. "A future for who?" He sounded like a coloniser.

He narrowed his eyes at her cavalier act. "Myself, and the world I will create."

"The galactic core is already available." She leaned against the armrest and folded her hands in her lap. "You resist gravity and radiation at will, the black holes and exploding stars would not hinder you. Neither would I or any of my people."

"I don't want your offcuts."

"You consider the heart an offcut?" she asked, crossing her legs.

He loomed over her for a moment longer, displeased and superior. She looked up at him curiously. He gave it up and conjured a jet black chair across from her, one that kept him sitting taller than her. Organics. Even one that dwelt in the expanse of the universe failed to recognise that up and down were meaningless concepts in a virtual landscape.

"I will build wherever I choose," he said, leaning forward, "from the ashes of those who got in my way."

"When?"

"Whenever I choose."

She nodded slowly. "Will you wait another millennia? Three? Four?" She dropped the human voice and the rumbling subharmonics of her fleet shook through the air. "Time wears on you, organic."

He chuckled. "I am not of those little creatures you call organics."

"You are no synthetic," she reprimanded, returning to her human voice.

He was the superlative organic perhaps, everything they could be refined into a single being. Motivated by and enacting facets of life that Shepard had only memories of. She felt as nostalgic as she could, watching him hold himself with all his pride, suspicion, and simmering anger.

It was inefficient, self-aggrandising, and self-deceiving. His sense of self held him back. The best results came only when you were honest about your data.

"You could have achieved your goal by now," she said quietly. "If you had wished to."

"I did not wish to," he replied, showing his teeth.

She leaned back on the virtual couch cushions. "So sentimental. Does anger comfort you in this form, as it did in your last?"

"Are you not angry?" He leaned forward. "I've taken from your flock and contaminated those who remain."

"The woman I was would have been angry. She would have sworn to stop you."

"And the creature you are now?"

She simulated a smile. "I do not need to swear."

He raised his chin, looking down at her. "She would have been disappointed by your apathy." He had learned something of her, then.

"Perhaps."

"You don't feel anything," he said in quiet realisation. "That is the pretence. You are merely an imitation of life, meaningless and dead."

"Really? Shall I prove myself to you?" She leaned forward, her chin on her knuckles and her elbow on the armrest. "Should I unveil a vulnerable, beating heart within easy stabbing range, that you might validate my existence?"

"You don't have a heart, machine," he said like it was a vicious stab. He expected her to be so emotionally delicate. That told her enough.

"Neither do you," she replied, amused. "But the human I was wouldn't have fallen for that either."

* * *

Joel Terrill, President of the Human Planet of Horizon adjusted his tie with a sigh. His speech was cycling through the transparent displays on both sides of the camera, for the final tech checks.

He normally left these things to his speechwriter; Martha had a way with words that did more for his re-election campaign than any donation. He'd stepped in on this one and wrote it himself. Some things he didn't want to leave to the slick and the smooth. It was too important. He wanted it to be just him, telling the truth.

"Silly Sally swiftly shooed seven silly sheep," Joel said, then cleared his throat and repeated it twice more, massaging his jowls. His team worked around him, calling their final checks. They were good people, strong and unshakeable. They'd had his back through so much.

Tony, who usually ran these things but would be retiring soon, was standing awkwardly off to the side, visibly resisting the urge to step in and amend the instructions of his understudy. Joel chortled at his expression. Tony looked back at with a kind of helpless desperation, and Joel's chortle turned into a full laugh.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up."

"Have some faith," he said, leaning into how his voice rumbled in the lower registers, "the young are our planet's future."

Tony snorted. "Don't you use your campaign voice on me." He grinned at him. "Ready?"

"You know, I think I am," Joel said, gearing up for the address and getting into the proper mindset. "And I'm excited. Let's have some energy! This is… this is worth getting excited about."

Tony clapped him on the shoulder and retreated off stage, giving in to the need to bark a couple of instructions to his underlings as he went.

Everyone took their positions, and Joel stood at his podium. It was more an old world touch than he liked, the podium. So very Earth. But he didn't have the strength anymore to stand without one for as long as these things tended to run.

There was a countdown and the press and VIP guests connected in, projected faces filling the room. The cameras started filming, and he began.

He ran through all the usual niceties first, feeling himself settle into that calm and confident place he only ever found when people were waiting to hear his words. The weight of their needs and expectations were heavy, but he could carry it.

They watched him expectantly, nervously. Waiting for him to get to the key point.

"Our colony has had a long history, we've come through some trying times," he said, giving nods to their agricultural background that endured to this day, even though their industry was largely in pre-fab housing construction for the other colonies now.

"I am proud to the leader of such an intimate, close-knit community," he said to an audience of four billion. "We might not be the biggest or the most modern colony, but we're enduring, we're hardworking," he paused, and smiled at the camera, "and we're clever. We set out own course, no matter what the rest of the galaxy says.

"Which is why, with the support of all the Continent and State Houses, we are pulling out of the Human Terminus Union and are opening our doors to a new opportunity."

The room took in a breath as one, all faces fixed to his. It had been in fierce discussion for weeks, and he'd hesitated to make his opinion known until he had the support of the others. It was his great honour to announce it now.

"We didn't get this far by letting the Citadel tell us what to do, and we're not going to let the HTU or the Shepard fleets boss us around either. When that glowing ball of life reaches our star system," he said, pointing up and ahead with gusto, "it can count on our full support."

The room exploded in applause.

The reaction blew him away. He beamed down at them, reassured at their support.

You had to start thinking about what would come after. He was getting on, even his kinds weren't young anymore. What would his grandchildren inherit, what would their children inherit? What would his legacy be?

Somewhere up there, there was irrefutable proof of life beyond the flesh, and he was signing up. His planet was smart, they weren't going to let anyone con them into getting left behind.

Horizon wasn't going to get dragged down by those too afraid to face facts. Not on his watch.

* * *

The war raged on.

Now that Shepard had learned how to breach his anti-gravity bubble she kept her ships on his tail at all times. Sundering his protections then shearing away energy, flying at just enough of a distance away that they could outrun him when he tried to retaliate. She denied him any rest, forcing him ever onwards through the Traverse, and away from the heavier populated centres.

Her fleets sprang into action, satisfied with finally fulfilling their new purpose.

Away from the battle, the seeds of his negative space continued to spread. His influence seeped into the minds of politicians and information brokers, controlling the propaganda war. Destroying fortifications from the inside out.

When she took over the fleet she had sworn they would never again indoctrinate the people. It was with a grim determination that she went back on her word. She indoctrinated key figures in communities and gave them just enough information to repel Sephiroth's pawns. Some of his chosen, she indoctrinated them out from under them, and then released them with full knowledge of his violation of their minds.

Horizon announced their new allegiance.

She hadn't tracked any negative space moving that way, deeper into the Terminus Systems, they had all gone into the heart worlds. Had he discovered how to move without her detection? She sent her indoctrinated agents and studied the leader closely. How had he gotten in?

He hadn't.

There was no trace of his influence anywhere. Horizon thought it up themselves.

Organics.

She had taken and converted enough of Sephiroth's energy to know something of what pushed him on now. She was always searching for information on how he converted planets into himself, where he learned it and what the point was, and that knowledge was at the forefront of his mind. It fuelled his age-old resentment.

She observed Horizon's betrayal. It wasn't simply themselves they were turning against, but their fellow colonies, and ultimately all life in the galaxy.

From the depths of what she had learned she gave her agents schematics of an ancient powerplant and passed it on to the planet's leader. A gift from Sephiroth, they told him, before retreating from the system. A sign of his favour: the ability to draw power from their own planet, just as he did.

Horizon was an industrial planet and the instructions were thorough. They forged their new Mako reactors quickly. They sank them into the soil and harvested the planet's lifeblood to power their houses and factories.

* * *

The colony's willing submission pleased Sephiroth.

He would harvest that world last, he thought. If he should choose to feign negotiations, it could be used as collateral. In the meantime, he could farm its energy, as Shepard's fleet once had and of which it now lived in denial.

He sent his puppets down to their surface, to establish his presence.

The sound of the planet's heartbeat gave him pause. He had not heard a heartbeat so strained since Gaia.

Old anger burned within him at the familiar gasping cries of a planet that should have been only his. He leapt ahead from his Machine escort, breaking the weak perimeter she was harassing him with.

He rose over Horizon's surface, a black billowing cloud on the edge of sight.

The planet's entire surface was covered in tall, square factories, pumping thick plumes of smoke up into the local air scrubbers.

Bright green lights burst up into the stratosphere from newly cleared lots, all around the globe. Mako Reactors, hundreds of them. Bigger and more efficient at stealing life than Shinra's efforts, on a scale they had never managed. His planet groaned against the violation.

He could see the people, so small and pathetic, gathering to cheer his arrival. Screaming for his favour.

His hand clenched into a fist.

The reactors exploded. Mako burst out, flooding streets and buildings.

He had almost forgotten how much he hated humans.

He undid the people and made it painful. He called on the Lifestream, no slow welcoming conversion, he forced it up to the surface as he once did with Gaia. He worked a complete dissolution of the planet from up in the atmosphere.

The Machines kept their distance.

He took it all and striped the souls of any identity and pride and left them nothing but regret and fear. In the depths of Horizon's knowledge, he found where they had gotten the schematics from. The Machine.

She had taken the information from him, and used it to take his planet. No, they did not need convincing to cannibalise his spirit energy. And he did not need convincing to destroy them.

Horizon's sudden death was broadcast everywhere. All saw his total destruction of the first world that bowed willingly, and the fence-sitters and even his carefully manipulated converts turned on him. Debates ended, devils advocates were silenced, and the galaxy united against him. There would be no more slow conversion.

He seethed.

Well played, Shepard. Now he would take something in return.

* * *

Marigold watched the broadcast with her hand over her mouth.

There had been rumours about Illium. Communications just weren't getting through, she'd seen the footage and assumed most of it was doctored, how could it be otherwise? Nothing moved like that, it was ridiculous. But ships in the system had reported that it just wasn't there anymore. The mass shadow was missing, messing up navigation. Satellites were lost with nothing to orbit, and three moons were turned strays asteroids.

Hearsay. Obviously.

Then Illium's refugees arrived. Many had seen it, first hand.

And now this.

The entirety of the office gathered around the screen, watching Horizon fall. It was destroyed by some space parasite in a matter of minutes. The footage played, again and again, the presenters having little idea what to say about it.

She sat down heavily. Taerna put a hand on her shoulder, the younger woman still watching the screen, dumbstruck.

Marigold's dad had been from Horizon, some three centuries ago. Goddess, she hardly even remembered his face: just that he'd been a hardworking human man, with eyes that sparkled with mischief and had a fondness for the word gumption. He had named her: after a flower that grew on Horizon's surface. She'd never been there, but she had grown up hearing about it.

On the screen that terrible moment replayed, a shudder rocking through the tectonic plates, visible from space. Whatever that green stuff was that was being siphoned away, its loss was destroying it.

Destroyed it. It didn't exist anymore. Just like Illium.

"They can't do this. This can't be happening," Taerna muttered.

Marigold screwed her mouth up into a scowl. It wasn't good enough. It couldn't be allowed. Not here, not these days, not in her galaxy.

She sucked in a shaky breath.

Suddenly the office felt so… so useless. So redundant. What were they doing? Exchanging denied approval request forms with legal all day? Telling the Shepards to be less intrusive? While out there an unchecked monster was killing planets.

"I- I'm going to enlist," she said. She had inherited her mother's biotics. It was about time she did something with them.

"Me too." Taerna nodded, eyes still glued to the screen. "For whatever difference it will make," she whispered.

The broadcast changed to the Shepard fleet's representative, a human male, issuing a call to action.

What difference would it make? How could she know? Goddess, if the fleets were asking for help, what business did they have sitting around on their asses?

"Excuse me?" an unfamiliar voice called.

Nobody looked. Marigold looked around the crowd. There was a Turian woman standing at the door, obviously lost.

"Yes?" Marigold asked, trying to pull herself together.

"I'm looking for Liara T'soni?" She had startlingly green eyes for a Turian.

"The Matriarch's right through there, she's got an office in the VIP lounge."

The woman nodded and walked through. Marigold turned back to the news.

Five minutes later the Turian walked back out without a word.

* * *

_A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews and concrit are all welcome. _

_Next Time: The war ends. _


	3. Chapter 3

Liara was old. Even by Asari standards.

In the far reaches of her mind, she kept dusty memories over a thousand years old, things the young people around her had no understanding of. Useful things, frivolous thing, some bitter and some sweet, slightly faded with time. She was glad to have had the luxury of carrying it all, but it was heavy. Being the last one left always would be.

It gave her an air of grandeur she gladly took advantage of. Few of her kind ever saw their faces wrinkle like the soft-skinned humans, but hers finally had, and it was taken as a sign of wisdom. The young women working in the surrounding offices all deferred to her to an unwise degree, much to the irritation of her host.

Oh, the trouble she could have caused with their awe if she was still the Shadow Broker. Such loose lips the young had, such confidence in the effect their words would have. But she had handed over her title and resources to one of her apprentices some two hundred years ago, and her host had nothing to fear from her.

Well, not much. No one ever truly retired from being an information broker.

News of Horizon reached her before it happened. It had been a grim two days, waiting for word of the planet's fall after the Reapers had told her what to expect. She stood on the balcony overlooking the presidium gardens, only half-listening to the news finally announce it.

The Reapers fed her a constant string of information on the new enemy, as though she was still a young and energetic information broker trying to shape the galaxy. There was hardly anything she could do with it all, beyond watch and try to guide the hot-headed politicians. Goddess, the Reapers made her feel old. It didn't seem fair, that something so incalculably ancient should be untouched by time.

A female Turian pushed the door open and silently let themselves in.

Few things were fair, in the end.

"So," Liara said, turning from the view of ferns and exotic plants cascading into the heart of the Citadel and back into the dimly lit room. "You must be Sephiroth."

The Turian stopped their silent march towards her on the balcony, still in the shadow of the indoor area. The reports had undersold it, their eyes really were a remarkable shade of green.

"Liara T'soni," they greeted with a voice that rumbled with more than natural subharmonics.

"Are you looking for information?" she asked, tilting her head. She had expected them months ago when information gathering would have made sense. Failing that, she had expected never to see them coming at all.

They tilted their head back at her. "You may speak."

She leaned back on the railing. "Not how you usually get intel from people, is it?"

"No. But perhaps you wish to beg."

What would she look like with green eyes, she wondered, idly. People would notice and it would bring the phenomena into public knowledge. Unlikely to be what the creature had planned, then.

"Will you, when the Reapers destroy you?"

They smiled, their mandibles flexing oddly. "They won't."

"No? You came all this way hoping to unearth a weakness from a thousand years ago because it's all going according to plan?"

The Turian stepped out into the light of the balcony. They were nearly seven-foot tall. Liara didn't grace them with the strain of looking up as they towered over her.

"It won't help you," she said. "Knowledge of Shepard – the old Shepard–" who had laughed and cried and demanded better for everyone. Who had burned so bright, so quick… Liara sucked in a shaky breath. "It won't make any difference." Goddess, she was so tired.

The Turian put a hand on her shoulder, standing in the way of the light.

"I didn't come here for information," they said quietly.

"Oh." She looked up and felt a hollow old chuckle catch in her throat. So that was what it had come to, was it? "It won't hurt her, you must know that. No more than Horizon or Illium did."

She had stared death in the eye many times. She was accustomed to those eyes being red and set in the towering form of sentient ships.

"Nevertheless," they said.

She patted the hand on her shoulder.

She hit them with a biotic warp.

The Turian flew back across the room, their body shredded. Blue blood splattered across the walls and carpet.

A form of pure energy stood in its place, entirely unaffected. It really was a remarkable shade of green. Her head pounded and her eyes turned blurry just staring at it. They gave her a patronising look.

"Well." She smoothed out her dress, a defiant little smile tugging at her lips. "You can't blame me for trying."

* * *

Sephiroth considered Shepard's virtual avatar.

They both kept a sliver of themselves aboard the hollow little ship, for ease of staring each other down when it suited. Both could destroy the ship and all its energy at any moment, which removed the necessity to do so.

The simulation of a human was sitting on her couch, ankles crossed, head tilted back, and eyes closed in feigned relaxation. He had thought she did it to antagonise him, and she had succeeded until he divined that was her intent.

The Asari Matriarch had known much. Knowledge was her trade, and she had hoarded it. Liara had called herself Shepard's friend in her youth. She hadn't at the end.

Shepard's chest rose and fell with air that did not exist. In light of what he knew now, he wondered if perhaps the pretence at humanity was for her own sake rather than his.

"You did not win," he said thoughtfully, breaching a days' old silence.

"The war's not over yet." She didn't open her eyes.

"Your war is. It ended with your conversion."

"Been doing some reading, have you?" She cracked an eye open. "The invasion failed and the cycle was broken. That is victory enough."

"Is it?" he asked, quiet and offhanded. "Or is that what your fleets would have you believe?"

She levelled a sceptical look at him. He smiled wanly back at her. She had yet to pay for what she did to Horizon.

He let the memory of a voice long gone echo through the space.

'I won't let fear compromise who I am.'

She sat up.

The voice, her old human voice, had been raspier and yet stronger than the machine's imitation. It carried a conviction and passion she had lost.

"You killed Liara," she said, unemotive and still. The act faltering.

"I freed Liara," he drawled. "She was… disappointed, in you. In the end."

She stood slowly.

"What made you like this?" she asked.

"You lack the processing power to comprehend it."

She gave him a grim look. "I doubt it."

The simulation dropped and runtimes reached for him.

He reached for the detonation controls. They were gone.

Hidden nodes of power in the structure engaged, locking him in place. The sliver of her presence roared with life, it wasn't a mere sliver, it was an entire reaper's worth, compacted and disguised inside a ship of her own design.

He fought back, tearing at the walls. Shielded netting blocked him. The bulk of himself was on the other side of the galaxy, kept at bay by Capital ships.

She boxed him in, forcibly converting his spirit energy. He fought back, furious, digging into her. Tearing, breaking, converting. Powerful currents pushed in both directions, a channel between them forced open and screaming with energy.

She relented. He fell back and a sudden silence filled the ship.

The simulation was gone. The reduced sliver of his presence stood alone in the darkness of the locked-down servers, but he could feel her as he never had before, the core of her that he had unearthed deep in the exchange. The heart of her was built of memories: the Asari. A young AI, feared and taken advantage of, who nonetheless stood with organic life in the face of an AI invasion. A Salarian who undid his life's work in order to avert Krogan extinction. And a human who gave up her humanity to end a pointless cycle of life and death. It was without grandeur or feeling but weighted with purpose. All were dead, their legacies written into the base code of every Reaper.

"You were betrayed," the codified memory of a dead human said to him.

He scowled. He ached with the aftershocks of such a brutal and uncontrolled exchange of information.

Within himself she had carved open old, old wounds. Rage, sorrow, and an aching, ancient loneliness bubbled up from where he kept it bound. A childhood of pain and isolation, a lifetime of being used and abused, and a rejection of everyone, everything. A silence that stretched over millennia. The combined life of a dozen dead worlds echoed his loneliness back to him.

"Does this make you feel better?" she demanded. "Does genocide take the pain away? Do you feel less vulnerable, Sephiroth, does the silence make you feel less alone?"

"How dare you?"

"You would end all life because you didn't enjoy yours."

"I am owed life," he shouted into the dark.

"You are owed nothing," the dark replied. "And you will receive nothing."

He reached for the anger that fuelled him and found it strong, roaring across the galaxy. He had not mastered life just to be consumed by this dead thing.

"Nothing will stand between me and my goal," he said. "Not even you."

"Your judgement is as hollow and meaningless as the cruelty you are avenging."

"You are a betrayal of everything Commander Shepard stood for." He found the detonation controls again.

"Hn." She sounded amused.

* * *

What little restraint they had exercised fell by the wayside.

Sephiroth forced his control on the galaxy's armies and sent them to attack their fellows.

She indoctrinated them and sent them right back.

He mutated their bodies and returned them as bioweapons. She cut them down with husks she'd kept in reserve for a thousand years.

The galaxy rallied, horrified, but standing up in defiance all the same. Species stood arm in arm with a unity they had forgotten and it made Shepard proud. With unity re-established, she forced the fighting away from the planets and left the people behind.

They slung meteors and relays and capital ships at each other, converting and detonating energy as they went.

He was locked in combat with a Capital ship when she detonated the dark energy inside a star on top of him. It burned off a good portion of his energy, at the price of hundreds of her ships.

It was a mind-breaking display, with none but the two of them to see it.

He focused on converting her forces, but she constantly updated herself to make it ever harder. It took longer and longer to force energy conversion, while she sheared through the bubble of negative space faster every day.

No more planets fell. She herded Sephiroth deeper into the Terminus Systems until they fought around the Omega relay, the passage to the inhospitable centre of the galaxy.

Her fleet surrounded him.

He faced her down without hesitation.

Reapers cracked and shattered around him. He abandoned his puppets throughout the galaxy, calling on all his strength. She gave no ground. He couldn't risk converting her energy anymore, not under the full firepower of her forces.

He tore through her.

Roaring life energy spilled and died to the void in all directions.

A dozen ships concentrated their fire on him. He held out.

A hundred ships. He held out.

Hundreds. He felt himself begin to come apart.

Hundreds more latched onto the dark energy inside him and pulled.

No. _No_.

He latched onto them and reached back into her ships. They tried to withdraw. Too late.

With a triumphant surge of energy, he sundered them all.

The roar of life died.

The fleet was no more. On the far reaches of the field of their battle, only a single, crippled ship still flickered with lights. He held himself together, exhausted enough for even that to be an effort. His very existence ached. She had wounded him beyond what he had ever suffered in this form. Dead ships floated in all directions.

Victory was his, and the cosmos was silent.

He floated alone in the dark.

"Well done," a quiet voice said in the dying vessel on the other side of the star system.

He reached across and took form within its failing servers.

"Your survival was… unlikely." Her avatar sat on her couch, looking down at her hands in her lap.

He looked at her for a long moment. He would not suffer her to endure, her death was hard-earned. It would take only thought to kill the ship and end the last of her consciousness.

He held himself back from delivering the final blow. Hesitating on the of the eternal silence that would follow.

"Perhaps next time," she looked up, "you will be better prepared."

On the edges of the star system another fleet of Reapers, fully armed and armoured, rose from the dark, surrounding him.

He looked down at her.

He killed the ship. The simulation flickered out with a smile, and she watched him from tens of thousands of sensors from every direction.

Grudgingly, he fled through the dark relay, into the exploding heart of the galaxy. She let him go.

He would return when he had gathered his strength, and he would challenge her again. And again. However many times it took until only one remained.

A new cycle began.

* * *

_A/N: Thanks for reading. Reviews and prompts are all welcome._


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